The demand for security systems that monitor businesses for alarm condition has continued to grow as more business owners seek to protect their premises from various hazards and threats. Such threats includes fire, flooding, robbery, break-ins, etc., that may be monitored and reported to a monitoring station. When a sensor such as a motion detector is triggered, a representative at a remote monitoring center receives an alarm event code and initiates a response process, including contacting a homeowner or others on a contact list and/or first responders such as local firefighters and/or police to request a dispatch to investigate the event at the premises being monitored.
In addition to security systems, these businesses typically have a separate and independent payroll system for tracking the attendance of employees for the purposes of compensation and evaluating performance. For example, traditionally, business have relied on standalone time clocks to track employee attendance. While useful, these time clocks disadvantageously do not interface with other systems on-site at the premises. At most, other independent payroll systems communicate with an on-site payroll server such that a user can access payroll information via the internet or network. While these other payroll systems are able to communicate with on-site payroll servers, these other payroll systems remain independent in structure and function from security systems that monitor the businesses for alarm conditions. For example, an employee that arrives to open the business for the day first gains access to the business, and then disarms the security system, typically by entering a disarm code in a control panel of the security system located proximate the front of the business. With the security system disarmed, the employee walks to a break room where the standalone payroll system is located in order to clock-in to work. Employees arriving to work after the security system has been disarmed, simply go to the break room and clock-in to work via the standalone payroll system.
When it is time to close the business for the day, typically the last employee clocks-out via the standalone payroll system and then walks over toward the exit to arm the security system. Once the last employee causes the system to arm such as by entering an arming code, the last employee secures the premises, e.g., by locking door(s) and/or gate(s), and the security system monitors the premises until the security system is disarmed the following day. The security system disadvantageously functions independent of the payroll system and vice versa.